


custom concern

by chiarascura



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Assumed Dorian Pavus/Felix Alexius, M/M, Pining, References to Depression, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-13 15:32:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10516602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiarascura/pseuds/chiarascura
Summary: carver starts a job in a call center and it slowly sucks the life out of him. then he meets felix.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title from the [song by modest mouse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQC4XbYvHUo)
> 
> I posted this chapter on my tumblr ([@janeclawsten](http://janeclawsten.tumblr.com/)) and I made a few tweaks before posting it here. there's more to come but this is mostly an exercise in how much I hate my job and my own pining so.... yeah bring on the angst

Carver held his breath, kept his expression in check so he wouldn’t scoff and roll his eyes in front of everyone. He needed this job. He needed to take this seriously.

Even if it was slowly sucking the soul from his body with every subservient “yes ma’am” or “no sir.”

Working at a call center had been the last priority for Carver. He wanted to be a ranger at Sundermount National Park, but all the seasonal jobs were past due and there were no full time positions open. A friend of a friend had referred him to the Circle since they were always hiring, and now Carver could see why their attrition rate was so high.

It wasn’t that he had a problem with politeness, as Leandra would have knocked that right out of him early on, but the obsequiousness to the top 1% and their subsequent steamrolling and rudeness just got under his skin.

“Now class,” the trainer said in that perky voice, the one that sent stabbing pains into his ears with every rising inflection like it was a question, “we will be going out to the floor to nest with some of the specialists currently on the phones.”

_Specialists_. Everyone is a _specialist_ here, there are no representatives or agents, just _specialists_. Never say “computer” or “system” on the phone, never give out the location of the call center except “the Free Marches,” never imply we are doing anything except… Carver wasn’t sure. Never break the illusion, in any case, that _specialists_ are anything but miracle workers or are not robots. That _specialists_ aren’t googling every single thing you’re asking about. That _specialists_ aren’t human. It made Carver’s head hurt.

He grabbed his headset as the training group filed out of the computer lab, making a grocery list in his head as they traversed the maze of the warehouse that housed the call center, out onto the floor where he’d be working. Carver estimated about forty or fifty people in the room, all staring at their computers and typing furiously. Soft pop music played from the television mounted high on the wall where supervisors could watch the statistics of the calls. There was no life or liveliness on the floor, and Carver felt the energy drain out of him. He somehow managed to keep a neutral expression while they were assigned to other _specialists_ to live listen to their calls.

“Hawke,” the trainer said, and Carver resisted the urge once again to roll his eyes. That wasn’t his name, not what he wanted to be called, but no one cared. “You’re with Felix here.”

Carver gritted his teeth, composing himself to work with another dead-behind-the-eyes unhappy minimum wage drone, like everyone here seemed to be. Carver could feel himself morphing into one already in the first week.

He was fully unprepared for the sunny disposition and, honestly, attractiveness of his _specialist_.

“Hello,” Felix said, sticking his hand out for Carver to shake. “Hawke, is it?”

Carver shook Felix’s hand, noting the firm grip and warm skin, and something slid into place within him. “Carver, actually.”

Felix smiled and disengaged, starting to connect the wires of their headsets. “Of course, Carver. How is training so far?”

“It goes,” Carver shrugged, settled into the chair beside Felix inside his tiny pod. Not _cubicles_ , the voice of his trainer reminded him in his head like it would be any less depressing, _pods_. Their knees knocked beneath the small desk, with barely enough room for Carver to shift and no room for him to fully stretch out.

As Carver looked around the floor, each desk was bare, as people had to find an open seat for every shift. It lacked personalization, grey walls dotted with reminders about call disclosures and phone numbers, sterile like a blank slate. Carver had never wished for knick knacks or photos more than now.

The phone rang, no more than a little chime in the headset. Felix switched off mute and in a serene voice answered the call. “Welcome to the Circle Concierge, this is Felix, with whom do I have the pleasure of speaking today?”

Carver’s head spun with how quickly Felix worked through the call, switching between screens and tabs at light speed, entering information into each one while keeping the customer talking. After only a couple of minutes, Felix closed the call and turned to Carver. “So? How was that? Did you catch everything?”

“Uh,” Carver said eloquently. “Great.”

Felix smiled again, eyes crinkling at the corners, and Carver’s heart thumped in his chest.

“It’s overwhelming, I know, but once you start to do it, you’ll get the hang of it.”

_Not if you’re distracting me,_ Carver thought. He had stared at Felix’s hands for far too long as they flew across the keyboard during most of the call, and Felix’s soothing voice took away from the actual boring words.

Maker. What had he signed up for?


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> carver is discouraged about the job hunt, and felix shows up

“Maker damn it,” Carver muttered under his breath. It wasn’t quiet enough to go unnoticed by another patron at a nearby table in the coffee shop, who glanced up at him with a silencing look. Carver sent an apologetic smile to the guy, who shook his head and huffed, before turning back to his computer. Carver gave him the stink eye and looked back at the depressing email.

He’d received his last choice for shift times: 3pm-12am. No after work drinks or evening socializing for him in the near future. It was better than the unpredictable hours of his last job, where Meeran would call him at any given hour and want him to come and bounce at the Red Iron Club; still: a disappointment. He knew it was too much to hope for a normal 9am-5pm shift, where he could still have a life outside of work and hang out with other people.

Curiosity about Felix’s schedule flickered through his brain, and he shut that thought down as quickly as he could. Right now, Carver’s training began at 7am, and since Felix was there whenever the training class went to the floor, it was safe to assume Felix worked one of the revered normal shifts. They’d probably overlap for an hour or two, and that would be that. There was no reason to feel any type of way about Felix’s schedule, since Carver would be there until midnight every night anyway.

Carver pressed fingers to his temples and took a deep breath. _This is only temporary,_ he reminded himself. _Only until I hear back from the Park Rangers. **If** I ever hear back from the Park Rangers._ He pushed his hair back from his forehead with a rough gesture, fingers tangling in the too-long strands. If his mother could see him now, she’d harangue him to get a haircut, to look more professional. He pushed the thought of Leandra away, not wanting to poke at the still-open wound of their parting when Carver left Lothering.

He wouldn’t need to look professional, he thought grimly as he clicked away from his email to a job posting and almost immediately closed the tab on his browser, if the job search kept on like this.

The search was stalling. His cover letters went nowhere, and out of the dozens of applications to National Parks across Thedas that he’d sent out in the past 8 weeks, he’d gotten 1 phone interview, 10 denials, mostly radio silence, and the shitty call center job. All disheartening, especially after the one and only interview he’d gotten was met with a “thank you for your time, but we’ve selected another candidate.”

Carver reached for his coffee mug, finding it empty as he brought it to his lips. Was it worth spending another $4 on mediocre coffee to sit in this shop for another hour to write more applications? He thought about the spreadsheet he’d created, sprawling with dates and submissions and posting links and denials, and his gut clenched.

Who did he think he was fooling, anyway? No one wanted to hire him, a college dropout with nothing to offer, except shitty minimum wage jobs that needed warm bodies in seats rather than skill sets. The cup clinked on the formica as he set it down with more force than he’d intended.

The bell above the door jingled and a gust of cold air blew into the cafe. Carver looked up instinctively, only to find Felix standing framed against the white sky outside. He pulled off his beanie with one hand and removed the earbuds from his ears, looking up at the menu board. The warm gold of his skin glowed in the dim coffee shop, and his full lips were bitten and red. His hands were deft as they rummaged in his pack without looking inside, and his brown eyes scanned across the room and stopped on Carver.

Carver swallowed the sudden lump in his throat and snapped his jaw shut, realizing it hung open. This was not what he was expecting today. He lifted a weak hand in greeting, suddenly keenly aware of his sweatpants and scruffy hoodie, unshowered and probably smelling ripe. Literally every thing he wouldn’t want to be when meeting a cute guy.

A smile bloomed in Felix’s face, and Carver felt a bit short of breath. His high cheeks and the tip of his wide nose were rosy from the cold outside, and snowflakes dusted his shoulders. The image of Felix breathless and blushing cemented in his mind, and he couldn’t help imagining Felix looking up at him at work, in his kitchen, in his bed--

_Fuck_ , Carver thought.

The tips of his ears were red, too. It was unfairly endearing. Carver shut the lid of his laptop as Felix strode over.

“Carver,” he said, sounding pleased as he stretched out his hand. Carver took it, and Felix’s cold fingers sent a pleasant chill through him as their skin touched. “What a nice surprise. How are you doing? How are your first few weeks at the Circle?”

Carver let go of Felix’s hand, the still icy pads of his fingers trailing across his palm, and his mind completely blanked. He didn’t want to let people at work know how much he hated this job and that he was still actively searching for something else, because he’d felt that retaliation before with Meeran. He didn’t want to lie to Felix, though, and didn’t know what else to say to cover for it. “Uh. You know.”

The jingle of the bell over the door saved him from stumbling any further, as Felix looked back over his shoulder at the man entering the shop. Carver’s eyes followed Felix’s attention, and found a devastatingly handsome man removing leather gloves. He looked like a fashion model, with chiseled jawline and high cheekbones, deep bronze skin that looked too flawless to be real, hair and moustache styled to perfection, and an air of confidence and superiority that were magnetic.

“You’re lucky I like you, Alexius,” the man said as he sauntered over, placing his sunglasses atop his head. “I would never park the car for anyone else.”

Felix rolled his eyes, affection clear between them, and the bottom of Carver’s stomach lurched again. Their body language screamed ease and familiarity, weight tilting towards each other and thoughtless touching, people who had known each other for years and felt absolutely comfortable. They could be friends, Carver tried to reason with himself, there’s no reason to assume they’re anything more than that. The only problem with this line of thinking was that Carver could see no reason whatsoever that anyone would pass up on dating Felix, least of all this well groomed and clearly smart stranger before him.

“Dorian, this is Carver. He just started on the floor, finished training a week ago.” Felix patted his hand on Dorian’s shoulder, leaving it there as he turned back to Carver. “This is Dorian. He’s a Quality Control Analyst at the Circle too. You’ve probably seen his name on some of your QA scores.”

Carver had never hoped the earth would open up and swallow him whole like he felt right then. This information made everything about this situation even worse. The Quality Analysis team listened to random calls and checked documents to make sure the _specialists_ were following the guidelines, and they graded each call. Carver had been trying so hard at work, but his QA scores hadn’t risen above 50% in the three weeks he’d been there. Everyone told him that 85% was the goal, and he’d get there with more practice, but Carver had definitely seen the name Dorian as the person rating his calls. “Er, hi.”

“Carver, truly a pleasure.” Even his voice was hot. Dorian seemed pleasant enough, but Carver knew he knew what a failure he was at the Circle. Also, if he was dating Felix…

“We just popped in for a coffee before heading out to the market in Hightown,” Felix said. “We’ll go order and come say goodbye before we leave, okay?”

Carver nodded his head in acknowledgement, throat closing up enough to prevent real words. He stared somewhere above Felix’s shoulder, as he knew his eyes would betray the crushing pressure below his sternum. He hoped Dorian didn’t notice Carver’s reaction to his boyfriend.

He opened up his laptop and stared blankly at one of his cover letters, the white noise in his ears blocking out the regular sounds of the coffee shop. What had felt warm and cozy minutes ago now felt stifling, and Carver felt the palms of his hands and the pits of his shirt growing uncomfortably damp.

What a fucking terrible day. The shitty working times, another rejection email, and a surprise encounter with a cute coworker that turned into a third wheel moment. Why couldn’t he function like a normal person? The sting in his sinuses and the wet thickness in his throat grew, and he needed to leave.

Carver packed up his stuff as quickly as he could, shoving his computer into his bag and feeling the crunch of paper caught beneath it. He needed to get out of this coffee shop before he started crying in public. At least crying in his car would be slightly less obvious.

He waved at Felix and Dorian as he rushed out of the door, not meeting their eyes before scrambling.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> carver gets distracted.

Call after call after call. Carver hadn't taken his break or even started any case work because the phone queue kept rising. Somehow after three hours they still had people waiting to speak to them. He had five minutes of after after call time in order to finish up his case notes and take another call, and he was nearing the end of that before the phone automatically picked up the next in queue.

Carver scrubbed his fists against closed eyes until he saw the blooming colors behind them. Blinking them open, he saw Merrill and her big eyes watching him.

“Go on break.”

Carver looked up at the screen that showed the statistics about their calls. 3 callers in the queue, and everyone working was actively on a call or rushing through their after call time. “I can't, Merrill, were slammed.”

“Now,” she said, steel in her voice and a long straight finger pointed to the door. “Before you burn out and yell at someone.” She’d been here only a handful of weeks longer than him, but somehow she was so bloody good at this. Merrill had kept an eye out for him when their shifts overlapped, and Carver couldn’t be more grateful for her.

Carver ducked his head. “It was only the one time…” he muttered as he clocked out and stood, stretching his arms with a satisfying yet worrying clicking in his joints. No one looked up as he left the call floor, and Carver was thankful to have no eyes on him for the moment.

He shuffled to the closest break room, drawn by the aroma of burnt coffee and old microwave, but stopped short as he saw Felix. Well, specifically his vision narrowed to Felix’s butt, sticking out of the open refrigerator as he rummaged through it. Carver stopped abruptly in the doorway and his brain short circuited.

Carver couldn't move and time seemed to slow around him. Felix’s backside was round and lush, looking firm and the perfect size to fit inside Carver’s hand. As he dug through the fridge, he wiggled just enough to make all the blood in Carver’s body rush south. He had tried not to sexualize Felix or think about him overly much, because he knew this crush was unsustainable and did not want to make things awkward between them.

Even though they didn’t share the same shift, Carver always found himself drawn to the cubicles (sorry, _Makerdamned pods_ ) that were near Felix, so sometimes they chatted between calls. If Carver got stuck and didn’t know what to do, Felix always tried to help him with advice or pointing him in the right direction. They’d developed a fragile friendship, and Carver wanted to push down his feelings. Confronted with the glorious sight of Felix’s perfect ass, he found his resolve crumbling.

Eventually he shook himself out of his stupor and cleared his throat. Felix startled, making a soft noise before backing up a step. He turned, a frozen ice cream pop halfway in his mouth, and looked at Carver with wide eyes.

Carver had to turn to the side. He didn’t want to stare at Felix’s hollowed cheeks and plush lips as they sucked on the phallic object, as he could already feel a chubby in his jeans and this was going to make it _so much worse_.

 _Think about mum, or dead dogs, or cemeteries._ Anything but the image now seared into his brain of Felix’s round and touchable backside immediately followed by what Carver wanted to think he’d look like sucking something else.

“Carver, hello,” Felix chirped after removing the popsicle from his mouth.

His brain felt like mush, exhausted from the call volume and overstimulated by this scene in the break room, and Carver could hardly formulate a reply. Just as Felix’s expression began shifting from cheerful to concerned, Carver managed to greet him. “Uh, hey. Break time.”

“Today’s been something, hasn’t it?” Felix thankfully kept the popsicle from his mouth, waved it around in one hand as he gesticulated and chattered about the day, the other rested on the countertop as he leaned against it. “The phones have been ringing nonstop! I had to help a woman who asked if we could reroute a plane for her. Apparently, she’s running late and wanted to know if we could call Antivan Air to have the flight delayed for her, or at the very least have it make an additional stop before its final destination.”

It was all Carver could do to lean against the opposite counter and keep a straight face, fighting the way he wanted to gaze adoringly as Felix launched into his story. Usually, Carver exited the call floor as soon as his break started, to go relax outside or in his car or on the other side of the building. Somehow, that urge was absent, and Carver wanted nothing more than to listen to Felix complain or narrate or… anything else, really.

“How about you? Any particularly ridiculous calls today?” Felix brought the melting popsicle to his mouth again and Carver averted his gaze to the doorway where he could see other agents still answering calls.

He hoped his cheeks weren’t as red as they felt. “Yeah, a few. One woman wanted to know why we couldn’t get her tickets to see the museum at Weisshaupt for entrance in--” Carver checked his watch. “Seven hours. They’re sold out through the box office and apparently they suggest reserving a month in advance.”

Felix laughed and Carver couldn’t help but watch. His eyes twinkled and his musical laugh was infectious, bringing a smile to Carver’s face as well. “Some people’s children,” Felix said, and Carver nodded in agreement.

He couldn’t think of anything to say, and the silence stretched between them. Carver felt awkward, wondered if Felix could feel it too; he didn’t know how to keep the conversation going. He fidgeted and shifted his weight on his feet, then without thinking, moved towards the coffee machine. The coffee was always disgusting: cheap, burnt, and kept in the machine for far too long, but it was available and it was free.

“Oh, while you’re here Carver, a few people are going out for drinks on Friday night. I-- It would be fun if you came with us.”

Carver pushed the button and turned back to Felix. His heart soared with the confirmation that Felix wanted to hang out with him, maybe even considered him a friend; then it dipped as he remembered his schedule. “Can’t. I’m working.”

“Oh, alright then.” Felix’s eyes dimmed a bit, and he twisted the rapidly melting snack in his hands.

Shit, that wasn’t the right thing to say. His heart thumped in his chest and he stared at a point just above Felix’s shoulder. “My next day off is Monday, though.”

Carver couldn’t explain how a quirk of the eyebrow could make his heart race and belly twist. “Is it? Great! There’s a good happy hour on Monday at the Hanged Man, with cheap beers and appetizers.”

Sometimes Carver hated the way he smiled. It wasn’t cute like Bethany’s smile, it was too teethy and made his face look weird. He didn’t usually need to control it, as scowls came more naturally to him anyway, but he found himself smiling so much more whenever Felix was around. He hoped Felix didn’t notice. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

“Brilliant!” Felix beamed at him and Carver couldn’t hold his gaze, unused to such simple happiness being directed solely at him. “My break is over but that sounds like a plan.”

Carver picked up his coffee from the machine and brought it to his mouth. “Cool.” Felix waved and left Carver in the break room, telling himself _this is a friendly coworker outing, not anything special. Don’t get your hopes up._

As he took a sip of his shitty coffee, burnt his tongue, and didn’t even mind, he thought _maybe it’s too late for that._


End file.
